The invention disclosed herein relates generally to automated mail sorting and more particularly, a system and method that predicts the presence of life harming materials in mailpieces.
The processing and handling of mailpieces consumes an enormous amount of human and financial resources, particularly if the processing of the mailpieces is done manually. The processing and handling of mailpieces not only takes place at the Postal Service, but also occurs at each and every business or other site where communication via the mail delivery system is utilized. That is, various pieces of mail generated by a plurality of departments and individuals within a company need to be addressed., collected, sorted and franked as part of the outgoing mail process. Additionally, incoming mail needs to be collected and sorted efficiently to ensure that it gets to the addressee (i.e. employee or department) in a minimal amount of time. Since much of the documentation and information being conveyed through the mail system is critical in nature relative to the success of a business, it is imperative that the processing and handling of both the incoming and outgoing mailpieces be done efficiently and reliably so as not to negatively impact the functioning of the business.
Various services are used in the United States and other countries for delivery of mail (incoming mail) to individuals and businesses to recipients to whom the sender does not want to deliver personally. These services include, for example, the United States Postal Service (USPS) and other courier services, e.g., Federal Express(copyright), Airborne(copyright), United Parcel Service,(copyright) DHL(copyright), etc., hereinafter called xe2x80x9ccarriersxe2x80x9d. Unfortunately, sometimes the delivered materials may be illegal and/or hazardous to the health of the recipient and to the party who is delivering the goods, e.g., life-harming. Examples of life-harming materials are explosives; gun powder; blasting material; bombs; detonators; smokeless powder; radioactive materials; ammunition; atomic weapons; chemical compounds or any mechanical mixture containing any oxidizing and combustible units, or other ingredients in such proportions, quantities, or packing that ignite by fire, friction, concussion, percussion or detonation of any part thereof which may and is intended to cause an explosion; poisons; carcinogenic materials; caustic chemicals; hallucinogenic substances; illegal materials; drugs that are illegal to sell and/or dispense; and substances which, because of their toxicity, magnification or concentration within biological chains, present a threat to biological life when exposed to the environment, etc.
Soon after the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, someone and/or a group of people, has been adding harmful biological agents to the mail. The addition of harmful biological agents to the mail submitted to the USPS has caused the death of some people and necessitated the closure of some post offices and other government office buildings and has caused delays in the sortation and delivery of mail including the delivery of incoming mail to businesses. Individuals who receive and handle mail are encouraged to use safety precautions such as: washing their hands thoroughly with soap and water after handling mailpieces; avoiding shaking mailpieces; avoiding bumping or sniffing mailpieces; and avoiding handling of mailpieces suspected of contamination. These measures can be impractical when the volume of mail such as the incoming mail at a business is large. Thus, there is an urgent need to exclude or detect life-harming materials that are included in the mail in such a way that the delivery of the mail is efficient, reliable and safe and thus does not to negatively impact the functioning of the business.
Various automated mail handling machines have been developed for processing incoming mail (removing individual pieces of mail from a stack and performing subsequent actions on each individual piece of mail). Generally, the mail handling machines separate individual mailpieces from a stack, read the mailpieces using an optical character recognition (OCR) system and compare the read information to an addressee database in order to determine the appropriate destination points for delivery of the mailpieces. Previously, if a determination could not be made by the incoming mail handling machine as to the addressee, a video image of the mailpiece was viewed by an operator and in the case where the addressee image was readable by the operator, addressee information was keyed into the system and associated with an identification number for the mailpiece. The previously rejected mailpieces are then resorted by reading the identification information which can be printed on the mail during the first sort. The identification information is linked with the addressee information manually keyed in by the operator during the reject processing/video coding sequence and is used to sort the mailpiece to the proper destination bin. Video processing of mailpieces has been performed at on-site video coding terminals or off-site video coding facilities where the video image is transmitted for determination of addressee by an operator. The information is then transferred back to the sorting apparatus. These automated mail sorting apparatus do not contain the ability to detect and/or sanitize mailpieces suspected of containing life harming agents.
Thus, there is an urgent need to exclude or detect life-harming materials that are included in the mail in such a way that the delivery of the mail is efficient, reliable and safe and thus does not negatively impact the functioning of the business. Thus one of the problems of the prior art is that a system is not available for processing incoming mail and detecting and/or sanitizing mailpieces suspected of containing life harming agents. Therefore, a system and method of processing incoming mail is needed which integrates, prediction of harmful content, detection and/or sanitization with the mailpiece processing so as to help deter delays in incoming mail delivery caused by the presence or suspected presence of life harming material and/or to detect and/or sanitize the mail so as to protect the intended recipients from harm.
This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a system and method for processing incoming mail which integrates prediction of suspect status of the mailpiece so as to help deter delays in incoming mail delivery caused by the presence of life harming material and to protect the intended recipients from harm. This in turn affords for less delays in mailpiece processing.
The present invention is directed, in general to automated mailpiece sorting apparatus and more particularly, a system for predicting the presence of harmful materials in a mailpiece. The system generally comprises a mailpiece sorting apparatus which includes a feeder, an optical character recognition (OCR) scanner, a video scanner, a mailpiece transporter, a diverter and output module (or an integrated diverter/stacker module), compartments or bins for receiving sorted mailpieces, an OCR system for reading addressee information, an addressee database, a suspect database, a personal computer (PC) or microprocessor based control system. The mailpiece sorting apparatus of the present invention also comprises a suspect database containing criteria for suspect mailpieces.
In an embodiment of the present invention suspect mailpieces are determined by reading the mailpieces and using a pre-set criteria to make the suspect determination; suspect mailpieces are diverted from the mail stream. Once the first pass sorting is completed, the suspect mail may be further processed using video coding to make a subsequent determination of suspect status. In another embodiment of the present invention the system is contained in a detection area and clean room. In another embodiment of the present invention the system is connected to an investigation entity which compiles information regarding suspect mailpieces.
An advantage of the method of the present invention is that it provides a system and method for helping to deter delays in the mail delivery. Another additional advantage of the present invention is that the negative impact of delayed mail delivery is reduced. Other advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification. The aforementioned advantages are illustrative of the advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention.